


456. sweet darkness

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [153]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 06:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8700859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: The floorboards outside of Sarah's door creak.





	

The floorboards outside of Sarah’s door creak. Helena usually doesn’t step on them – she avoids Sarah’s door, walks around it in a wide arc. _That_ board and _that_ board and _that_ board are silent when she walks on them; if she’s in the mood for it she can make it a game, being silent. Not being noticed by anyone.

So she’d forgotten that Sarah’s floorboards creak. (Well, she hadn’t. Not really. But she’d pretended that she’d forgotten, because sometimes it’s nice to imagine a world where she doesn’t have to remember every single thing that divides _safe_ from _danger_.) When she puts one bare foot on the floorboard below the doorknob, it groans. Helena freezes. Mistake. Bad. Terrible, bad, horrible mistake.

There’s no sound. She relaxes. A bead of nightmare-sweat goes trickling down her bad, stinging on her scars.

She doesn’t even know what she’d wanted. To make sure Sarah is still alive. To be absolutely certain that Helena hadn’t somehow – in her sleep – finally killed her.

Helena shifts her weight very carefully onto the cold boards directly in front of Sarah’s door; they creak anyways, in a cheerful sort of way. Helena holds her breath. Still no sound from inside the door – not even when she opens it, slowly enough that it’s soundless. Still not a single bit of sound.

There’s a lump of a body

There’s a lump of a _sleeping_ body in the bed. Sarah is sleeping. Helena thinks. She can’t hear Sarah’s breathing from here, can’t see it, but Sarah’s sleeping.

Probably.

Helena doesn’t know if the floorboards in Sarah’s room creak, because she never steps on them. She never goes into Sarah’s room. Sarah has never said that this would be trespassing, that she would be upset, but Helena can feel it in the muscles of her neck and back: it’s wrong. Her sister’s space is not her space. It’s been so long since they shared a womb. They’re separate now.

She walks in anyways. Plenty of boards creak. Sarah doesn’t budge, because she’s a heavy sleeper, because she’s just very tired. Step step step until Helena is standing over the bed—

And Sarah breathes in a particularly loud breath. Helena’s shoulders slump. Alright. Everything is fine. Now that she knows everything is fine it seems silly, to think that it ever wasn’t. What did she think? That Pupok would slither out of her dreaming mouth and slide into Sarah’s room and—

Never mind. The point is that Sarah is fine. Helena stands there for a second or two, uncertain, and then steps backwards. The floor creaks with great enthusiasm. Her first instinct is to hiss _shush_ at it, like they’re co-conspirators in the great game of letting Sarah sleep. She doesn’t. _That_ would be the silliest thing to do.

But Sarah makes a questioning sound anyways. Helena freezes again, can’t help it. Instinct. Her heart pounding a guilty beat against her ribs as Sarah shuffles in the blankets, tips her face towards Helena.

“What’s wrong,” she rasps.

“You’re awake,” Helena says stupidly.

“Woke up when you came in,” Sarah slurs, eyes slipping closed again. “Floorboards creak.”

“Yes,” Helena says, “I saw.” She pauses. Whispers: “Sorry.”

“What’s wrong,” Sarah says again, sounding less patient than the first time.

“Bad dreams.”

Sarah hums an understanding little _mm_ and doesn’t say anything else. She’s asleep again. Helena starts tiptoeing cautiously back towards the door, but Sarah makes a more irritated sound. Oh. Not asleep, then.

“C’mere,” Sarah says.

Helena dutifully walks back.

“No,” Sarah says, “like…” she wriggles a hand out of the covers, drowsily flops it on the blankets next to her. Oh. _Oh_. No.

“No,” Helena says. “I am tired now, I will fall back asleep okay, thank you, no.”

“Helena.” Helena doesn’t know how Sarah – still barely awake – manages to cram her voice full of that much annoyance and amusement and love and it hurts and it shouldn’t and Helena loves her, always, that’s always true.

She bites her lip. She looks at the door. She wriggles her freezing toes on the floorboards and then gets into the bed, before Sarah changes her mind.

“If you kick me,” Sarah sleep-slurs, “I’m disownin’ you.”

“Okay,” Helena whispers. Sarah makes a noise of assent and then burrows deeper into the covers. Her breathing slows, evens, and Helena lies there wide awake. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt safer in her life; she lets her breathing match the rhythm of Sarah’s breathing, and slowly waits for her feet to get warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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